eat someone's lunch
/ˈiːt ˌsʌmwʌnz ˈlʌnt͡ʃ/
"eat-someone-s-lunch" is a 16-letter English headword indexed on PlainSpell.
The verdict
“eat someone's lunch” is uncommon English (outside the top frequency list), classed as a verb. The kind of spelling people second-guess.
- Unranked
- below top-frequency English
- 19
- letters
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed September 3, 2026) - To best or defeat someone thoroughly; to make short work of.
Corpus desk
Index EN-eat-someone-s-lunch · eat someone's lunch · English
eat someone's lunch · unranked · 0 variants · 0 confusables
- FREQ-UNRANKED Unranked
- LEN-MEGA 19 letters
- VOW-7 7 vowels
- CONFUS-0 No pairs
- VAR-0 0 variants
- BOOK-THIN "E" thin
- PHOTO-UNK Peer pending
Read with this headword: Spelling guide for this pattern
Desk codes from Wiktionary headword shape, FrequencyWords rank tier, confusable-pair count, generated misspelling depth, letter-cohort book size, and photo-finish peer. Not a difficulty grade.
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | eat someone's lunch |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Verb |
| IPA | /ˈiːt ˌsʌmwʌnz ˈlʌnt͡ʃ/ |
| Letters | 19 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 0 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Long-tail rank of “eat someone's lunch” in English
Rare enough to double-check
eat someone's lunch is uncommon English outside the top frequency list, classed as averb, transcribed /ˈiːt ˌsʌmwʌnz ˈlʌnt͡ʃ/. Rarity is why readers land here mid-draft. Gloss: "To best or defeat someone thoroughly; to make short work of.".
eat someone's lunch doesn't appear in our generated misspelling index, which points to an orthography that plays by predictable English rules. It is not paired with a close-neighbour confusable in our dataset, since no other headword is close enough in sound or shape to pair with it.
Etymologically, the entry records: Possibly from the idea of a stronger or quicker person snatching away and eating another person’s lunch before they can consume it. The correct English form is eat someone's lunch, spelled E-A-T- -S-O-M-E-O-N-E-'-S- -L-U-N-C-H.
Definition
- 1To best or defeat someone thoroughly; to make short work of.
Recorded use
Wiktionary examplesThese source excerpts show how eat someone's lunch appears in context. They illustrate usage; the definition above remains the entry’s reference meaning.
So in a classic it-ain't-broke-so-let's-fix-it-anyway move, some of our managers and salespeople began complaining that it wasn't written for Windows. […] If we didn't rewrite for Windows, they insisted, our competitors would eat our lunch!
"I would also suggest to my free enterprise colleagues—especially conservatives here—whether you think it's all a bunch of hooey [i.e., climate change], what we've talked about in this committee, the Chinese don’t," the South Carolina Republican [Bob Inglis] said in his opening remarks. "And they plan on eating our lunch in this next century."
Etymology
Possibly from the idea of a stronger or quicker person snatching away and eating another person’s lunch before they can consume it.
Definitions, pronunciation, and etymology for this entry are drawn from Wiktionary via the kaikki.org structured extract (CC BY-SA). See the methodology for how each field is sourced and updated.